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Day 2: Waiting at Bombay Airport we got talking to an interesting guy, Dr Jasper Graham-Jones.

Jasper was heading back home after a successful 24 day recruitment tour looking to sign up Indian students to take his engineering course at the University of Bradford.

We got into discussion about how university courses at his University are being “freshened up” in order to be attractive to Gen Y students straight out of school.

Jasper was the leader of the course in Marine Sports Technology - marketed to the youth of today as teaching people how to build more aerodynamic surfboards. Not surprisingly, this had been highly successful in attracting students - and the great thing was that the skills that were taught were “scalable”. People went in wanting to design a surfboard, but came out being able to design an ocean liner. Not a bad model!

As you wait in airport lounges you talk about all sorts of things. Jasper was also a trained paramedic and told a great story about how he was called upon on a flight to take care of a woman who was hyperventilating. Jasper gave the woman oxygen, removed her husband (who was making matters worse by distressing his wife further) to a minor supporting role and actually administered a placebo while looking the woman straight in the eye and telling her that she would feel better in ten minutes. As the root of the condition was psychosomatic, this worked a treat.

Anyway, good to meet you, Jasper - the first of many interesting people that we’ll meet over the next few months.